THE SENATE

PROOF
ADJOURNMENT
Wind Farms
SPEECH
Tuesday, 10 December 2013

BY AUTHORITY OF THE SENATE

Tuesday, 10 December 2013

THE SENATE

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SPEECH
Date Tuesday, 10 December 2013
Page 94
Questioner
Speaker Madigan, Sen John
Senator MADIGAN (Victoria) (21:07): In 2002, well
before Professor Simon Chapman's nocebo effect and
five or more years before the Waubra Foundation
was set up, people in the once quiet seaside town of
Toora in South Gippsland started complaining about
noise nuisance. They had not been visited by anybody
stirring them up or telling them that one day they might
feel sick. What had happened is the construction of
a wind farm near this little town by the Queensland
government's Stanwell Corporation.
Toora was one of the earliest wind farms in Australia.
The people reported their complaints and illness to the
local GP, Dr David Iser. He had not been visited by any
anti-wind-farm activists either. He was just the local
GP doing his job on Gippsland's beautiful coast and
now wondering why so many people were turning up
in his surgery complaining about noise and reporting
various symptoms.
South Gippsland Shire Council started receiving
complaints too. In 2005, they commissioned an
independent review of the noise-monitoring data
collected at Toora by the Stanwell Corporation. The
review found all sorts of problems with the way the
noise monitoring was being conducted that distorted
and limited the data. It also found that the wind farm
was breaching Victoria's wind farm noise standard.
The complaints continued, more reviews were done
and nothing improved.
In 2007, or thereabouts, the local council stopped
checking the noise monitoring at Toora. Over the
next couple of years, the operator bought out some of
the complainants and their houses were removed and
destroyed. Other complainants were paid out too. Gag
money coupled with legally binding confidentiality
agreements were papered over the problem, silencing
the complaints. Yet Toora wind farm continued
churning out noise into the local community and still
does to this day. What happened at Toora was the
pattern of the wind industry's behaviour that would be
repeated across Victoriaand probably Australia.
Today I tabled a petition from more than 1,000
people across rural and regional Australia. They are
concerned about noncompliant wind farms rorting the
renewable energy certificate system being allowed to
operate when they are noncompliant and causing a
range of harms and costs. Wind farm planning permits

Source Senate
Proof Yes
Responder
Question No.
stipulate a noise standard. If residents near a wind
farm make complaints about noise, this triggers a
compliance pathway where testing occurs, and then
more testing occurs. Wind farm planning permits then
stipulate turbines in noncompliant wind farms to be
shut down and removed, yet Victoria's regulator has
never ordered these final steps to be taken. In fact,
Victoria's regulator for large wind farms, the Victorian
Minister for Planning and his department, the regulator
for small wind farms and local councils have never
publicly declared a single Victorian wind farm to be in
breach of the noise standard stipulated in their planning
permitsnot one.
Over the years, thousands of complaints have been
made by local residents about noisy wind farms
scattered across Victoria, yet the regulators have not
publicly declared one wind farm to be noncompliant.
Why is that? How could that be? To answer those
questions I turn to Waubra wind farm, owned by
ACCIONA but operating as Pyrenees Wind Energy
Development. Waubra is Toora wind farm on steroids.
It is the case study of regulatory failure at state and
Commonwealth levels. Located northwest of Ballarat,
Waubra is a large facility comprising some 128
turbines spread over two municipalities. It started
operating in 2009.
To understand what is causing regulatory failure,
we need to part the curtains and look behind the
scenes. Over the last 12 months, my office has used
freedom of information to access various documents
from the Victorian Department of Planning and the
Commonwealth's Clean Energy Regulator. While the
Minister for Planning and his department have never
formally and publicly declared Waubra wind farm to be
noncompliant, behind the scenes a different story was,
and still is, being told.
Tonight I put on record some excerpts from those
FOI documents, because this story is not just about
Waubra breaching its planning permit conditions; it
is about a culture of noncompliance arising from
systemic regulatory failure that impacts every wind
farm in Victoria. The authors of this story are the wind
farm companies, the Victorian Planning Minister and
his department, the Commonwealth's Clean Energy
Regulator, local councils and others in the regulatory
community who are not paying attention. This story
involves the pain and suffering of little people living

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in rural Australia, environmental damage, fraud on a

grand scale, deception, lies and concealment.
Sadly, it is not a new story. There have been too many
examples of governments and corporations colluding
to circumvent regulation and accountability, harming
and stealing from people along the way. What is
different about this story, however, is the optimism
and high regard felt toward this particular technology.
Wind farms were believed to solve problems, not create
them. Wind farms and the wind energy industry were
promoted as the shiny white knights riding out across
the countryside, abating pollution and befriending all
who looked upon them. While this fairy tale captured
our collective hope that wind farms would solve our
energy needs, minus pollution, it has blinded us to the
technology's problems.
Our short-sightedness has been added to by
governments hiding information from the public at the
same time as they fail to regulate. We have been misled
by an industry that engages in sophisticated public
relations and spin
We have trusted an environmental movement whose
support has been manipulated by the wind industry and
its master, the fossil fuel industry.
Let's go behind the curtains to see the real story. Less
than two weeks after the November 2010 Victorian
state election won by a coalition government, the
newly appointed Minister for Planning, Matthew
Guy, requested a briefing from his department about
compliance issues at ACCIONA's Waubra wind farm.
He was advised by his department:
the Department of Planning and Community
Development
DPCD for short
requested Pyrenees Wind Energy Development
PWED for short
to provide a copy of the complaints register required
under the planning permits.
This complaints register indicated that 63 complaints
had been received by PWED. DPCD is aware that
complaints have also been received by the EPA and
both local councils. Some of these complaints are not
assessed as part of the noise compliance report.
DPCD understands that approximately 11 dwellings
located within 1.5 kilometres of the Waubra wind farm
have been vacated with noise cited as the reason. The
wind farm proponent has purchased eight of these
properties.

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A recent site visit by the Joint Municipal Association

of Victoria and DPCD working group on wind farms
to the Waubra wind farm reported significant audible
noise impact on an adjacent dwelling. The occupiers of
this dwelling have recently vacated the premises due to
this noise issue. This dwelling is not assessed as part of
the noise compliance report.
The ministerial briefing also advises:
an independent noise construction noise monitoring
program was to be undertaken to the satisfaction
of the Minister for Planning. PWED submitted the
report to the Department of Planning and Community
Development on 8th October 2010.
On 13th October 2010 DPCD provided a copy of
the report to the Environment Protection Authority
for preliminary comment. Preliminary advice from the
EPA indicated several concerns with the report.
On 15th October, 2010 DPCD commissioned Heggies
Pty Ltd. (now called SLR Acoustic Consultants) to
prepare an independent technical review of the noise
compliance report. On 1st December, 2010 the final
peer review was provided to DPCD.
This briefing note proposed that Minister Guy
tell PWED their postconstruction noise compliance
assessment was not to his satisfaction, that they
had breached condition 16 of the planning permit
and needed to run some of their turbines in noise
optimisation mode. He was advised to tell them to
document an operating program that would result in
compliance with the applicable noise standards.
On 10 December 2010, four days after being briefed
by his department, Minister Guy wrote to PWED in a
letter that identified multiple breaches of its planning
permits:
The complaints register required under Condition
15 of the planning permits should have been
assessed to establish whether complaints received were
investigated in terms of potential non compliance and
the results of any investigation ... I am not satisfied with
the independent post construction noise monitoring
program required by condition 17 of the relevant
planning permits.
A response to the issues and concerns raised in this
letter are required from PWED, including the review of
the Waubra post-construction noise compliance report
within 28 days of receipt of this letter in order for me
to be satisfied under the permit conditions.
Further, the report details that the operation of the
facility does not comply with the relevant noise
standard at several dwellings.

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I am therefore not satisfied in accordance with

Condition 14 that the operation of the facility
complies with the relevant standard in relation to these
dwellings. In accordance with Condition 16 I request
PWED to noise optimise the operation of the relevant
turbine or turbines.
I require PWED to document the operation of the wind
farm in a noise optimised mode ... I expect that this
program will respond to any omissions or additional
non compliance identified during the revision of the
report.
In 2010 we see a newly elected government and its
planning minister taking advice from his department
about the noise noncompliance of Waubra wind farm.
The advice contained in these and other briefing notes
are not the rants of a department infested with climate
change sceptics or infected with the nocebo effect.
Instead, we see a regulator giving the appearance of
doing its job. As time rolls on the number of ministerial
briefing notes about Waubra noncompliance grows.
Eight months later, we catch up again on the DPCD's
advice to its minister. On 22 August 2011 we learn, and
I quote:
SLR Acoustic Consultants identified a number of
limitations in the Marshall Day Acoustics post
construction noise assessment report. These have been
communicated to the wind farm operator who has
advised you that it has purchased two additional
dwellings and made a commitment to operate the wind
farm in noise management mode.
Noise management mode allows certain turbines to
be selectively modified to reduce rotation speed or to
shut down turbines by sector. These actions have not
prevented the continuation of noise complaints and
the Department considers that operating the facility in
noise management mode will not enable the facility to
meet the application 35dBA noise limit
The ministerial briefing note recommends the minister
request that the operator test for special audible
characteristics and provide another report, plus
maintenance records, and updated information from
the complaints register. If the operator refuses, the
briefing advises that the minister could call upon the
EPA to order the operator to hand over the documents.
Ominously, the rest of the briefing note is redacted; the
department's advice on the next steps in the compliance
pathway have been removed from sight. What do the
planning permits say must happen next?
They require the minister to direct the offending
turbines to be shut down and removed by the
operator. As just demonstrated in the department's

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own documentary record, the minister had reached

that point in the compliance pathway by August 2011.
We also know that in December 2013 Waubra's wind
turbines are still operating in gross non-compliance of
the wind farm's planning permits. There is no evidence
to suggest that Waubra's turbines have ever been noise
optimised. We have also confirmed that no compliance
notice has ever been issued by the DPCD or the EPA
against Waubra. And we know that complainants to
ACCIONA are now being given reference numbers
that indicate they have received more than 1,300 noise
related complaints since mid-2010. So what happened
between then and now? If the minister has not taken
the prescribed steps, why not?
On 27 March 2013 I received a letter from Mr Andrew
Tongue, the then Secretary of DPCD. He has since
become the Secretary of the Department of Premier and
Cabinet. His letter advised me:
the minister for Planning has not determined
whether the wind farm is or is not compliant with
the relevant planning permit (sic). The minister or the
department have never stated that the Waubra wind
farm is not compliant with the current planning permit.
So here we have a case where you are neither
compliant nor non-compliant; you are in the socalled demilitarised zone. Mr Tongue goes on to
reveal that the DPCD, the EPA and the operator have
been toying with a new noise-testing methodology.
They were and are hunting around for a noise-testing
methodology that will magically make Waubra appear
to be compliant.
Since 2011 most of the public servants who had been
advising Minister Matthew Guy have been moved
away from wind farm regulation. I understand their
roles have been centralised in the hands of one
gentleman known far and wide for his skills at playing
games and hiding information. I think the Australian
public should know that before I received Mr Tongue's
letter, it had already been emailed to ACCIONA. It
was emailed to Ms Lisa Francis, senior manager at
ACCIONA, by Mr Paul Jarman, Assistant Director,
Regional Projects, Planning Statutory Services, DPCD.
He emailed the letter to Ms Francis, on the day the
original hard copy was posted to me, with a message
to her that read:
I promised you a copy of the letters once sent. Here
they are.
The other letter he is referring to was sent by DPCD's
Mr Tongue to then House of Representatives member
Mr Alby Schultz. Ms Francis got a copy of that letter
before Mr Schultz did.

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ACCIONA's Ms Lisa Francis emailed my office telling

me to expect the letter from DPCD's Mr Tongue. She
was not doing me a favour so much as delivering me
a message that DPCD was ACCIONA's friend; DPCD
would look after ACCIONA before it looked after me
and the constituents being harmed by non-compliant
wind farms turning to me for help. The relationship
between DPCD and ACCIONA is so cosy that, three
years after he was first advised by his department
about Waubra's non-compliance, Minister Guy still
has not formally made a decision. It is so cosy that I
have been confronted with almost 12 months worth of
obfuscation, being ignored, my staff treated with open
contempt by DPCD, public documents being hidden,
and planning permit documents withheld courtesy of
Minister Guy and his servant Mr Jarman.
As recently as last week, Minister Guy responded
to a letter I had sent three months ago in which
he infers that his ALP predecessor had privately
accepted ACCIONA's own assessment that Waubra
was compliant. It is another too cute answer that
betrays the cosy relationship between the operator and
the Victorian government, regardless of the political
party. Minister Guy, his department and the wind
industry are playing games, hiding the truth while
people are being driven out of their homes.
Victoria's wind industry is churning out multiple
millions of dollars worth of renewable energy
certificates it is not entitled to and is being allowed
to rort the REC and LRET systems. Banks and
superannuation funds are lending billions of dollars
for the construction of wind farms, exposed to serious
risk arising from the planning permit non-compliance
being orchestrated by the wind industry and its public
servant, Minister Matthew Guy. Is the wind industry
telling its financiers that they are funding wind
farms that breach their planning permit conditions? I
take this opportunity to forewarn Australia's financial
institutions: you better start doing your homework
because the unfettered behaviour of this industry is
risking your jobs, your investment decisions and the
billions you have poured into this industry.

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